Reno Omokri Claims President Tinubu ‘Drug Lord’ Statement Reversed, Warns Omoyele Sowore

Reno Omokri has claimed that President Tinubu’s ‘Drug Dealer’ Statement has been reversed as he warned  Omoyele Sowore over his lawyer’s claim in court.

Brand News Day reports that Nigerian Ambassador-designate Omokri claimed that it was made by Mr Omoyele Sowore and his counsel, Mr Abubakar Marshal, in court on Tuesday, January 27, 2026. He said that he admitted that he made uncomplimentary remarks about the then Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, while believing those comments to be true at the time he uttered them.

According to the Ambassador-designate, after making those statements, I discovered that they were not, in fact, true, and I publicly withdrew them in writing and on video at various times and through multiple platforms.

He further stressed that on the day that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn in as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which was Monday, May 29, 2023, I released a statement affirming him as President of Nigeria and urging members of the public to put the past behind them and give him their full support.

He said: ”I repeated this stance and public call on Thursday, October 26, 2023, the day the Supreme Court of Nigeria ruled in favour of the President, after dismissing the petitions against him brought by Alhaji Waziri Atiku Abubakar, and Mr Peter Obi, amongst others.

”In that judgment, the honourable court declared that there were no criminal charges or convictions against the President. It clarified what had happened in the past, which had been misrepresented by some media.

He added that ”On the same day the judgment was rendered, I accepted it, applauded it, and stated that, based on that verdict, my stance on the statements I had made against the President had changed: not only was it wrong, but I fully believed it was fallacious.

Two days thereafter, on Saturday, October 28, 2023, I gave an interview to TVC, in which I affirmed the Supreme Court’s judgment, declared it a righteous verdict, and stated that their Lord Justices did a good job and followed the letter and spirit of the law.

When members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to which I was then aligned, continued to dwell on those unfounded allegations, I arranged to be interviewed on Newscentral Television on Thursday, March 27, 2025, where I said that the President had been “exonerated”, a word that I used intentionally, as I have a Master’s in Law from the United Kingdom, and understood and wanted to project and confirm to the Nigerian public that a constitutionally recognised official body had absolved the President of any wrongdoing, which is the legal meaning of that word.

Following this, I went on the most watched talk show in Nigeria, Politics Today, on Wednesday, June 11, 2025, where I admitted to the Nigerian public and the world at large during a live broadcast that I was wrong about those statements I made about the then candidate, and that I relied on false publications in the media in making them, and that having gotten accurate judicial pronouncements that exonerated the President and established beyond any reasonable doubt that the information I had erroneously believed, chiefly from Mr Omoyele Sowore’s platform, Saharareporters, and from the mouth of Mr Sowore himself, was false, I withdrew those statements and apologised for them.

”Before that, I had sought a private audience with the President himself on October 1, 2024, where I flew into Nigeria from my home in California, and apologised to him in person, prostrating flat on the ground, before stating that it was misled publication in the media into making those statements, and that my actions were not malicious, but that I was then labouring under a mistaken belief that what I had read in the media was true, when in fact it was wrong.”

Finally, in law, it is ultra vires, and well established by the rule against hearsay, to use previous statements made at a time when it was believed to be true to establish the veracity of a claim you yourself caused to be published, or to justify yourself or offer a defence, when the maker of that statement has admitted that the statements were made in good faith, but subsequently found to be untrue, and then publicly withdrawn, with various attempts at restitution made by the author of those statements you seek to rely on.

Quoting from Phipson on Evidence, relied on by the Privy Council in the defining case of Teper v. R and followed by common law jurisdictions, including Nigeria, “Former oral or written statements by any person, whether or not he is a witness in the proceedings, may not be given in evidence if the purpose is to tender them as evidence of the truth of the matters asserted”.

Omokri noted that, therefore, Sowore cannot rely on statements he made between 2022 and 2023, and then publicly withdrew in 2023, as a defence for statements he made in August 2025, more than two years after Omokri made those remarks, especially as both Sowore himself and his platform, Saharareporters, had originated those statements over a decade ago.

He later stressed that he had retracted his statement on Thursday, October 26, 2023, that President Tinubu is not, has never been, and will never be a drug lord. He is a person of good character, high moral standing, and a professed Muslim, with the largeness of heart to forgive his enemies and opponents when they realise the error of their ways and recant, which is, amongst other reasons, why he is uniquely and particularly suited to lead a multiethnic, multicultural, multi-religious, and multiracial country like Nigeria.

He added that: I make these statements voluntarily, freely and of my own volition, knowing them to be true, and I am fully prepared to testify to the above under oath in court, along with the tendering of documentary and dated, timestamped evidence establishing the veracity of the affirmations here made.